


for a smile they can share the night

by necrora



Category: Supernatural, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Dubious Consent, M/M, Not Underage, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 04:02:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1536788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necrora/pseuds/necrora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Skid Row, LA, Jared is a tenant in a house filled with struggling actors and broken dreams. But there's something about the boy who lives down the hallway that says he's not here for Hollywood: Jared can smell it.</p><p>Written for spnspringfling 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for a smile they can share the night

The scent drifts to Jared through the open refrigerator door.

Jared straightens, milk carton in hand, and sees the boy trailing tiredly into the kitchen. The stink of cigarettes and spilt alcohol reaches him, mixing with the sweetness that had come first.

“Good morning.”

Glittery eyes face his way, but the boy’s lips curl in a polite smile. “Good morning.”

Jared looks in the fridge, means to offer cold pizza, but the boy is gone with a bristle of leather and cheap metal cuffs.

\--

Dean works the night shift at a bar and showers in the morning. As Jared stands in the bathroom, he can smell the strawberry shower gel that Dean possibly uses to wash his hair, too, because Jared smelt it when the boy passed him on the way to his own room at the end of the hallway, the tip of his hair caressing the edge of Jared’s nose.

Jared enters the old bathtub, the air still warm from Dean’s shower a few minutes ago. As he stands under the water, his finger swipes a line against the wall where the boy might have leaned on as his hand fumbled downward, eyes closing in exhaustion after an entire night’s work, seeking escape.

Jared doesn’t know if Dean wants to be a singer, an actor, a model. It doesn’t matter. This is L.A., where dreams come to die.

\--

Jared works as the underappreciated, underpaid, and frankly underworked manager of a boy band. It’s possible he’s jaded.

There are seven teenagers and not an ounce of talent. His job is to babysit the Bieber-wannabes, herd them in the general direction of where they’re supposed to go, make sure one doesn’t slip through the cracks on the stage. He still can’t tell the any of them apart, remembers about four names at any given time.

Tonight, they’re at a networking event, and Jared ignores the idiots who have begun sneaking out instead of working on their careers. When he determines there are no talent agents worth his own time, he snags five sandwiches from the food table and comes home.

Home is a shabby two-story house in Skid Row, L.A., with at least fifteen different tenants. Home is the upstairs room Jared is renting. Home is the five creaky steps before the front door, where Jared sits, breathing in the night air as he munches on the BLT.

Dean sees him before he sees Dean, he’s pretty sure, but Jared doesn’t hear anything until he finds the boy at the bottom of the steps, wearily walking up. He’s not looking at Jared, but Jared calls out, “Hey.”

Dean is prettier than the idiots Jared babysits: a strong jawline, soft but defined eyes, and lips that might have been too long but curve just enough to catch anyone’s attention. The black leather jacket that’s 20 years out of fashion does nothing to hide the body under the torn t-shirt and denim.

Jared drags his eyes up from checking the boy out a little too late. He’s still there in time to see Dean’s gaze linger on the sandwich in Jared’s hand, the admirable lips hanging open as a look of sheer hunger lingers, before he snaps to attention. He sees that Jared caught his expression, and flushes, before instantly switching to that tough, bored look. He nods at Jared and swaggers up the stairs, a hotter John Travolta who never met his Sandy. He trails the smell of greasy food and smoke, alcohol and drugs, and cloying artificial strawberry.

It makes Jared want to reach his long arm out, snatch the boy as he tries to pass, haul him in tightly to Jared’s chest. Brand his scent into Jared’s skin directly. Protect him against the world, or maybe just L.A. Possess him.

Instead he says, “Early today.” It’s past 3 a.m. Jared usually waits for the boy to return home at 8 a.m., looking out the window where it faces the street, wondering if today’s going to be the day the boy doesn’t come back.

“Shift change,” Dean answers. He eyes Jared’s sandwich one last time before entering the house.

\--

Jared’s fired a few days later, which is the only reason he’s sitting on the sofa watching T.V. when Dean walks in wearing a suit. Jared blinks as he stares, wondering if all this time Dean had a respectable day job, but the boy radiates hostility when he notices Jared.

“Congratulations,” Jared says.

“What?” The boy doesn’t look at him, fidgets in the kitchen. Jared turns his upper body around to watch him.

“The interview,” Jared says. “What was it for?”

Dean looks confused, awkwardly leaning on the open fridge door as he peers at Jared.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Jared shrugs. He’s crossed out musician from his list because Dean’s singing is atrocious from what he heard a couple nights ago, and his taste in music is as out of fashion as his leather jacket is.

Dean licks his lips, and Jared suddenly takes off at least two years from his estimate of the boy’s age. He might actually be illegal to work in a bar. “Just, just a meeting. With someone. About something.”

Jared nods gravely at this wisdom. He turns back to the T.V. because while the tie that's a tad too long is adorable, Dean looks uncomfortable. He hears Dean murmur something as he walks out.

\--

Sometimes Dean talks on the phone. Jared can hear it, two rooms over, the boy’s characteristic low voice vibrating through the thin walls. He’s not sure who Dean talks to, but it sounds like two people because Dean has two dramatically different tones he uses.

The low voice assures him. Jared thinks Dean’s voice can’t be that low—Jared’s a struggling actor and a piss-poor (former) boy band manager, but he can spot acting from a mile away, and the boy’s voice is no more fitting than that overlarge, stuffy leather jacket. It can’t be anyone important he’s talking to.

The cold pizza is still there, and Jared contemplates the chances of Dean actually eating it if he leaves a note. He doubts it.

\--

Jared is reading by a tiny nightlight in his bed when the door opens.

Dean’s huddled in the door, shadowed, the damned leather jacket wrapped tightly around him.

“Hi,” Jared says. He doesn’t think Dean has ever knocked on his door, or even acknowledged his presence first.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says, and Jared thinks he sounds almost shy. He _is_  shy, Jared reminds himself, despite the swagger and the mouth and the leather enclosing the boy like a shell that he never sheds, never trades for something bigger.

So Jared stays still. Dean takes several steps in, closes the door, and stands in the middle of Jared’s room.

“Dean?” he says, softly, and the boy closes his eyes. The pale light from the window hits his face, before his hands come up to his throat, rubbing at his collarbone before slowly peeling away his jacket.

Jared has sucked in his breath even before the jacket was fully off, but then the smell hits him, and suddenly he’s dizzy, all thought draining away and his body free-falling into that sweet trap as if gravity doesn’t exist.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says, again, as he steps unevenly towards the bed. Towards Jared.

Jared can’t think, can’t imagine why Dean might be apologizing, but his body recognizes that sweet scent, and his body doesn’t want to let that sweet scent go.

He pulls Dean in, kisses those curved lips breathlessly, licks every hesitation out of him before gathering the boy into his arms and under him. Laid out on his bed, the boy isn’t small, and the muscles underneath Jared’s hands are hard, but Jared is bigger and he covers the entire length of the boy as he presses down.

Dean tosses his head back like a strung-out colt, moaning, and even as Jared fumbles with his pants, murmurs _are you sure_ , his mind registers that something is wrong. Dean’s jaws are going slack, and while Jared’s confident in bed, they haven’t done enough for the boy to be so heated up, hands clumsily seeking Jared out but failing each time.

“Dean,” Jared says, panting, trying to clear his thoughts even as his body helplessly grinds down, one knee worming his way to spread the boy’s legs apart. “Dean. Babe. Tell me. What’s wrong?”

A high whine escapes from Dean’s throat, and Jared’s heart sinks when he sees Dean try and fail to focus on him. “I’m sorry,” the boy pants yet again, and he sounds almost close to tears. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, they told me it might, but—”

“Are you roofied?” Horror strikes Jared, and he raises his body up from the boy’s with the sheer strength of his arms, staring at the writhing boy underneath him. “Fuck, Dean, what—”

The boy reaches for Jared blindly. “Need you,” he says, and the usual gruff is gone, and Jared was right, Dean’s real voice is a little higher and a lot younger than the leather-voice he normally uses. “I need you, please, I can’t stand it anymore—”

It takes everything Jared ever had and probably ever will have but he holds on to that shred of decency he has left, the shred of self he held on to even after these years of being in Hollywood. Dean looks so young, his eyes wet and fluttering, and it helps, because Jared wanted nothing more than to see the boy with all his leather finally stripped away but he didn’t want _this_.

“I can’t,” he says, and bites back a moan when Dean lifts his hips up, mindlessly seeking friction. “I can’t, shit, you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t want this.”

“Do too.” A spark of defiance colors Dean. “I knew—I knew this might happen, but I couldn’t think of anyone else to come to.” He raises a hand, which Jared only now sees is cut and hurt, to his cheek, where Jared only now sees a bruise forming. “Had to fight them off, I couldn’t stand it, but. You were the only one I could think of, in this fucking city.”

Realization grips Jared’s heart and squeezes. “You walked back in this state, to find me?” he asks softly, as he lowers his body again, covering Dean, protecting him.

A sound dangerously close to a sob escapes Dean. “Only one who didn’t try to— _please_.”

That does it, the begging, as much as the thought that Dean, drugged, dizzy and out of his mind, had zeroed in on Jared and desperately made his way home. Maybe Jared will feel bad later, when he remembers that Dean sought him out only because he thought Jared was the only man decent enough not to make a move on him, and all this time Jared has been thinking of nothing but this, spreading the boy out and opening him up, every layer stripped away until he lies naked and unprotected under Jared’s gaze, his claws, his teeth.

When Jared enters him, Dean whimpers and presses back into the mattress, eyes closing. “Shh,” Jared says. “Shh, look at me, babe, c’mon, open your eyes. I’ll take care of you,” he promises. “Look at me, I’ll make it good,” he says. “I’ll make it safe,” he says.

Dean’s eyelashes flutter. Jared leans forward, and impulsively licks his boy’s eyelids, tongue working the soft corners and crevices, and feels his boy shudder beneath him, surrender to him entirely.

\--

Next day Jared walks home with a script for a pilot up in Vancouver, and he doesn’t think anything has changed when he enters home. Dean had thoroughly refused to leave bed in the morning, muttering about being done with everything in the city that Jared found unbearably adorable. Wrapped up in Jared’s blankets in Jared’s bed, his boy looked nothing less than edible.

Jared’s fully planning on a repeat performance, but in the hallway he nearly runs into a man. Jared sidesteps him with a murmur of _sorry_ , but the man barely gives him a look as he passes Jared with a gruff, “Five minutes, Dean!” thrown back.

Jared stares at the man, and turns back to Dean’s room, where his boy has exited, the leather jacket and a duffel bag slung on his shoulder. Dean looks startled to see him, bites his lips, then puts his head down, flushing as he walks towards, then past, Jared.

It’s only shock that slows Jared down enough that he only catches up to Dean just inside the front door. “Where are you going?”

Dean doesn’t look at him. “Job’s done. I’m leaving with my dad.”

“Dean.” Jared’s not an idiot. He saw the gun at the man’s hips, and he sees a similar pistol hidden away cleverly at his boy’s hips.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says for the fourth time. “For last night. You don’t understand, but it was shitty of me to come to you. But you took care of m—it. You’re a real decent guy.”

 _Decent guy_. Jared wants to bark. Instead he says, softly, because another man has a prior claim on his boy and he needs to win him back all over again: “is that what you think?”

“I can’t explain. Okay? Just take my word for it.”

His boy’s trying to build himself up again, his walls jutting out, but he’s not doing as good a job as he wants. Jared likes that. Dean was clearly raised a soldier, the leather not the shell Jared thought but a uniform that he had donned and never took off, but Jared is a soft spot for him: a spot of confusion in a black-and-white world.

Jared raises a hand to Dean’s cheek, thumbing that strong jaw. It’s not a soft touch. They both feel the strength in it, the possessiveness in his fingers rubbing into the cheap strawberry scent. 

“I’ll come find you,” Jared says. “You don’t have to wait. I’ll find you, as soon as I can.” 

Jared’s boy looks confused, but the car honks outside, and he hurriedly turns and leaves through the door, one last look back at Jared. 

It’s not much of a good-bye, but it’s okay. Jared’s a hellhound, and he already has the scent of his boy.   

Jared wanders into the kitchen, finds the plate of cold pizza out on the sink. It’s gone moldy and hard, festering in the L.A. heat. He picks it up, bites into it. Remembers the look on his boy’s face as he looked at Jared, that night on the stairs.


End file.
